Life satisfaction peaks at 69. Indeed it does.
Cool, my Nobel prize is only three years away.
So I'll find these on Google Scholar with an author search for Science?
31 seems very old for a "playing chess" peak.
So basically, anything that's actually evolutionarily advantageous peaks before 40 and after that it's all about learning to live with yourself as you gently decline. That makes sense, I suppose.
Hi, I'm Larry Milkman, and this is my brother Darryl Milkman, and this is my other brother Darryl Handsome Stranger.
That's among grandmasters. Most of the people that ever learned to play chess have forgotten by the time they reach 31.
23? MIGHT AS WELL BE 230, AM I RIGHT GENTS?
But it seems very odd to me that arithmetic skills peak at 50. I think I peaked at around 11. I was great at arithmetic in elementary school!
I don't even understand the methods they use to teach arithmetic any more. I too was great at arithmetic in elementary school. It was actual mathematics that did me in, partly I think because beginning calc. was very badly taught. I would say that my arithmetical peak was between 9 and 12. I can still do long division in my head though, given time.
I note that there's no entry for male attractiveness to women. Can science not evaluate that?
Also, I can only assume that "happiness with your body" and "psychological wellbeing" are technical terms that have nothing to do with how a layman would use them in plain English.
OT: shots fired outside Parliament, locked down, 1 or 2 people apparently shot.
...and now reports of a Nice-type attack with a 4x4 on Westminster Bridge as well, 5-10 casualties.
Also apparently, "Scotland Yard said it was called to a firearms incident on Westminster Bridge amid reports of several people injured." - Beeb.
Not clear if 13, 14 are the same thing.
"At one point, a group of about a dozen officers armed with guns arrived, some also carrying shields. They marched into parliament." Last time this happened one of the MPs said, "You have sat here too long for any good you may be doing. In the name of God, go!"
Lot of sirens round here (near Westminster). I've talked to people inside the Palace but they are on lockdown and so have no more idea what's going on than I do.
Quentin Letts (for it is he) saw the cop stabbed and then the assailant shot: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2017/mar/22/peers-say-brexit-with-no-trade-deal-would-cause-signicicant-damage-to-service-sector-politics-live?page=with:block-58d29a02e4b01ea2330baf99#block-58d29a02e4b01ea2330baf99
Toby Helm: "People stranded on London eye which I see has stopped."
This is my peak salary? That's depressing.
20: Look on the bright side: you still have a year left to make your Nobel Prize winning discovery.
I want to be six-and-twenty again. When I was six-and-twenty I could fight all day and fuck all night. What men want does not matter. Winter is almost upon us, boy. And winter is death. I would sooner my men die fighting for the Ned's little girl than alone and hungry in the snow, weeping tears that freeze upon their cheeks. No one sings songs of men who die like that. As for me, I am old. This will be my last winter. Let me bathe in Bolton blood before I die. I want to feel it spatter across my face when my axe bites deep into a Bolton skull. I want to lick it off my lips and die with the taste of it on my tongue.
Life satisfaction level: HIGH.
CNN: "PM May moved to safety." Was it wrong of me to be disappointed?
Probably, but you weren't alone. In fact you don't want high profile politicians hurt in these things, because it only encourages the security state addicts.
25: tends to encourage the terrorists, too.
It's like there's some kind of codependency there.
British politics has gone so nutso I can't help hoping it's like Vulcan chess, if somebody could place a piece just so...
US president Donald Trump described the incident as "big news" after he was updated on the situation. Trump told reporters: "I was just getting an update on London... some big news having to do with London just happened," according NBC.
Well of course he did.
Charlie Stross today:
Here's a lesson I learned the hard way: once you're over 40, you should never commit to work-overload five years in advance. You'll be five years older, with worse health and less stamina, trying to keep up a pace dictated by your younger self. Over-work is fine--in brief doses. But as a continuous lifestyle for half a decade, it really sucks.
The Guardian liveblog had this gem of analysis:
"There is no official estimate of the number injured in the incidents today in Westminster, but police fear they may run into double digits, namely more than 10".
Just confirming that for the benefit of any readers still using Roman numerals.
I bet someone writes a first-person vignette, real or imagined, of being trapped in the London Eye during this terrorist incident. If real, it's being composed right now out of boredom, perhaps on a phone. "The city looked at once vast and tiny, indestructible and frail... people inside the pods bent over their phones like statue saints in prayer atop a building... Bored, I track a seagull's weaving flight as it appears and disappears through the floor glass, but its freedom and indifference seem trite, clumsily inscribed in the air like a quotation, while reality and history evade the Eye's view..."
"Bored" isn't the mental state I would be in if I was locked in a glass box high in the air during a major terrorist attack.
Helpless fear doesn't lapse into tedium for you?
(But i was imagining a navel-gazing, sententious fool... you know?)
Mostly I'd be worrying about when I could get to piss.
Helpless fear doesn't lapse into tedium for you?
I am delighted to say that I've never been helpless and terrified long enough to find out.
I have to remember never to respond to your comments. It might be nice if that were reciprocated, and improve both our lives.
Maybe a collaborative editing project. Please improve this.
The biting wind and height-induced terror had me praying that I would renounce all sin forever if only I could die on Argentine soil. Since I had only glanced at the outside of a bible twice in the last decades, I didn't have much confidence in the efficacy of my own prayers, and began whimpering.
Then the thoughts of falling began. Headfirst, arms out in an imitation of Superman? There would be no spectators that I cared about, the chain of errors that passed for my life had surrounded me with a handful of occasional marginal friends, family who reciprocated my avoidance, and drinking companions I disliked. No, not headfirst. Flat, facing up would be best.
Is 39 original? I ask because it sounds too good to have been knocked off in 27 minutes.
That shit was expensive, I'd be psyched to get extra time especially with exciting emergency response to watch below.
I am avoiding code modification to deal with an especially idiotic special case that has been rendered in an extra-Martian format by an automated process.
Or was that sarcasm?
I am avoiding code modification to deal with an especially idiotic special case that has been rendered in an extra-Martian format by an automated process.
Or was that sarcasm?
As far as Trump, if/when a Muslim associated attack happens to the US, there's probably no extreme of fapping that will get him in trouble with his base for being a little too happy about the political benefit of innocent lives lost. But I'm sure he'll give it his best try.
44 is obviously correct. However, in my ideolect, "Big news" means my wife telling me we've won the lottery.
If 42.2 and 43.2 are to me at 40: no, not sarcasm.
The biting wind and hundred meter terror had me vowing that I would renounce all sin forever if only I could die on Argentine soil. Since I had only glanced at the outside of a bible twice since my first communion, I had little confidence in the efficacy of my prayers. I heard myself whimpering into the wind.
Then the thoughts of falling began. Headfirst, arms out, Superman-prone? There would be no spectators that I cared about, the chain of errors that passed for my life had surrounded me with a handful of intermittent friends, family who reciprocated my avoidance, and drinking companions I disliked. No, not headfirst. Flat, facing sky would be best
In the pod with me were a French family with a four-year-old, two teenagers, and a fiftysomething woman of uncertain nationality holding a thermos. From time to time, everyone's eyes flicked to the thermos, then moved demurely down; the French maman's most often. When the four-year-old began to whine louder and wriggle in his seat, I realized why. I thought: will the blast come before, or after, the mother convinces the older woman to sacrifice her thermos to the cause of public hygiene? I couldn't bring myself to prefer one scenario over the other. It was all bleak.
Did these seagulls invent the junk food they sold on the ground I will never walk on again? Sour apple flavored shoelaces the color and texture of airport grip tape, somebody did this on purpose, other people put it in packages, and blood of Christ if I didn't pay for it. Now this stuff is here to keep me company.
The crone who sold it was wearing a shirt that read "pretty" in sparkly rhinestones, and the hoodie over it was a clashing shade of pink, not even the stains matched. What did she pass up in the shop when she picked that? None of this will save me when this whole fragile thing collapses. Look at those bolts holding the car up, some Shenzhen foundry cut costs by making up half the volume with sand I just know.
No, I've got to wrap the whole thing in two stupid tests to deal with the absence and bizarre buried reapparance elsewhere of a useful bit if information. Let me first see whether there is a third option other than salmonella or glop in Chef's imagination today.
11: I note that there's no entry for male attractiveness to women. Can science not evaluate that?
So, as growingly querulous voices rise and fall behind me I cannot help but nurture a guilty gladness that fast-spinning brain and slow-turning wheel could become for a time one and hold all at bay, leaving nothing to do and no ability to do it, but to let cold seep through steel and glass into hands and forehead, until the gray of the sunless day draws in and matches the still settled dust within; and a childish hope that this wheel never move again, and leave me, back turned on all and only the wind-hanging birds before.
I'd say 49 was good but apparently I'm not allowed to (38).
53/38: No prohibition as written, just a prediction that immediately turned out to be wrong, in fact. I get very snappy when stressed (over work, as always); I'm sorry, and thanks.
I must also single out 50.1 for praise.
Comity then?
I really hate it when some of my favorite commenters feud (and usually try to steer well clear).
Lots of brilliance up thread. I've been trying to come up with something suitably Ballardian but I've just been too distracted to put my mind to it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39361079
What a monumental pillock. (Trump Jr being rude about the mayor of London)
That shit was expensive, I'd be psyched to get extra time especially with exciting emergency response to watch below.
This assumes your pod is stuck near the top, rather than the bottom.
You know, when you're enforcing a racist executive order that recapitulates a Nazi practice (highlighting crimes of a disfavored racial minority) that was issued by a guy with actual Nazis working for him, you might not want to literally say, "We are just following orders," as an excuse:
"We're just complying with the executive order," said the ICE official, speaking on background, explaining that the preliminary list on self-identified sanctuary cities was based off public announcements and news reports and is not fully comprehensive.
The combination of child and thermos in 49 is a nice touch.
I am trying not to curse while I try to make this thing work.